It's mind-blowing! SpaceX Drops Big Upgrade on Starship Raptor V3 to Moon Shocked Industry...

It's mind-blowing! SpaceX Drops Big Upgrade on Starship Raptor V3 to Moon Shocked Industry...
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It's mind-blowing! SpaceX Drops Big Upgrade on Starship Raptor V3 to Moon Shocked Industry...
This is insane! What you’re looking at right now is the engine that could take humans to the Moon in the coming years. It’s called the Raptor 3, shown in a rare test video SpaceX recently shared, where they demonstrated exactly how this engine performs in the harsh vacuum of space.
So, what upgrades did SpaceX pack into Raptor 3 to make it ready for upcoming lunar missions? And how is it different from Raptor 2?
Let’s find out on today’s episode of Alpha Tech.
It's mind-blowing! SpaceX Drops Big Upgrade on Starship Raptor V3 to Moon Shocked Industry...
It won’t be long before we finally get to see all 33 Raptor 3 engines roaring to life on Booster 19, along with six more Raptor 3s on Ship 39, for Starship Flight 12, a mission SpaceX is targeting for the first quarter of 2026.
And this flight is shaping up to be something special. We’re talking about the most advanced, most powerful engines on Earth, mounted on the biggest rocket ever built. Everything about this test is aimed at one goal: getting ready for something far more ambitious, using Raptor 3 on the Starship HLS lander to take humans back to the Moon.
But because that mission is insanely difficult and packed with risks, SpaceX needs to prepare carefully.
It's mind-blowing! SpaceX Drops Big Upgrade on Starship Raptor V3 to Moon Shocked Industry...
And on December 4th, they gave us a pretty big surprise: a brand-new test video of the Raptor 3 firing at the McGregor facility in Texas. The engine ran for 6 minutes and 40 seconds, the longest continuous burn SpaceX has ever done. Not a short ignition test, not a relight, but a full-duration burn meant to simulate real Starship conditions.
As SpaceX explained:“Validation testing on a Raptor 3 performing a Starship v3 ascent burn. Multiple versions of this test will cover the different conditions seen by Starship’s three inner engines during its initial climb to space.”
And if you look closely, that steady blue-white flame already tells you everything, it’s the full-flow staged-combustion cycle running exactly the way it’s supposed to. And right above that thousand-degree plume, you can actually see a thin layer of white frost forming on the engine’s fuel plumbing. That’s the cooling system at work, keeping the metal cold enough that the engine doesn’t even need a heat shield, something we’ll talk about in a moment.

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Видео It's mind-blowing! SpaceX Drops Big Upgrade on Starship Raptor V3 to Moon Shocked Industry... канала ALPHA TECH